Free speech banned in public schools

When conservatives point out the obvious liberal bent in public education, along with the absence of teaching anything dealing with morality, we are often treated to a chorus of politically correct excuses for their behavior; sprinkled with a good dose of “we don’t want to offend ‘x’ group,” and topped off with a reminder that the Constitution requires a separation of Church and State—which of course, it doesn’t. Still, recent actions by school districts across the nation remind us how important it is to take back our public education system from the liberals and their high-priced teacher’s unions.

“They said the shirt could cause a classroom disruption and contained sexual content. Apparently some folks at Ramay Junior High don’t understand the concept of virginity.”

Sexually transmitted diseases. Teenage pregnancy. Thousands of teenage abortions. And the geniuses at Ramay Jr. High School are worried about the word “virginity?” Would the word “abstinence” be OK? Wait a minute. What am I thinking? You aren’t allowed to teach abstinence in schools because it’s “religious,” even though it is the only 100% effective method to avoid the consequences of teenage sex. Wait a minute. What am I thinking? There are no consequences for having sex outside of marriage.

Our second example of school administrators gone wild also occurs in the south—I thought the southern U.S. was supposed to be conservative—and it also involves the Bill of Rights, specifically, free speech.

Fulmer took the flags down, then returned them to the students at the end of the day. Spartanburg District 4 Supt. Rallie Liston said school officials don’t have the option to “discriminate” on an issue as fundamental as the First Amendment.

Damn those constitutional fundamentals. How can we expect teachers to be bothered with petty things like free speech when we have virginity T-shirts to burn and history to rewrite, dammit!

Our third example comes from California, the state that made it legal for allegedly transgendered students to choose which school bathrooms and locker rooms to use and which sport teams to join based on their gender identity. No, wait! That’s not the story.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals declined a request for an en banc hearing in a case holding that school officials could censor students who peacefully wore American flag clothing because those students were violently threatened by anti-American classmates. In other words, the court upheld a classic “heckler’s veto,” and in so doing empowered violent bullies and undermined decades of free-speech jurisprudence.

The facts of Dariano v. Morgan Hill Unified School District are relatively simple: On Cinco de Mayo, anti-American students threatened a small group of their fellow students who chose to wear American flag–themed clothing. Rather than discipline the bullies, the school gave the kids who wore the flags a choice, turn their shirts inside-out, or go home. Two students chose to go home.

To be fair, this comes to us from the land of fruits and nuts, but as the ACLJ concludes:

Under traditional constitutional principles, this is an easy case. Your free-speech rights do not depend on a listeners’ subjective response, and they are certainly not conditioned on a listeners’ willingness to break the law. Otherwise, free speech means nothing — bullies would be empowered to shut down speech whenever and wherever they wish.

During the days of Nazi Germany, Hitler created the Hitler Youth as a means of indoctrinating the young with the Nazi beliefs held by Der Führer in order to create a people who would be totally committed to the state. Sounds like America’s public schools and the teachers union might have a bit in common, don’t you think?

Of course, under an Obama presidency, there will be those on the left who will have a problem with me bringing up a Nazi Germany comparison. But I figured since a Washington D.C. middle school recently gave a homework assignment to a bunch of 6th graders, where they were instructed to compare Hitler with George W. Bush, I figured that rule had been changed.